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I reached out and grabbed it from his hand, pretending not to notice the way my skin brushed against his.
“Good girl.” He smirked.
And then he was gone.
My knee was still warm where his hands had been.
Shit. I was in trouble.
ChapterFour
My eyelids grew heavier with each passing second until the darkness came back to me. I welcomed it as always and surrendered to the deep, peaceful sleep.
“You know you are a fool,” my mother said to me. “You’ve been acting like you are in control, but you’re not, are you? You are nothing, daughter. You don’t have control here. You never will!”
I opened my mouth to speak, but something cold and heavy kept it shut.
My mother only smiled in amusement. “That’s what you get for speaking up. Good luck telling your secret to anyone with your jaw bolted closed.”
No, this couldn’t be happening. The panic had already set in, spreading through my chest and clawing at my lungs. My mother had clamped a cold, metal mask over my face that restricted any movement in my jaw. I could hardly breathe, let alone talk.
I pleaded to her with my eyes. I wasn’t going to tell anyone my secret! I had nobody to tell, and certainly no reason to tell them!
She began humming a song as she secured tight chains around my wrists and around my ankles. I looked for the window, the familiar window that had kept me sane all those times I had been chained up in the basement. But there was no window this time.
There was no light.
I looked to my mother again, but her face had morphed. She was no longer the achingly beautiful blonde woman who had raised me. Her face was gone entirely, replaced by a demonic, evil face of hatred.
The scream in my mouth became muffled by the iron shackles around my face that seemed to be shrinking.
“Not to worry, darling,” she said, but her voice had changed, too. The words became a low roar of terror as she crawled closer to me. “Nobody will ever find you down here.”
I tried to scream louder.
Nothing changed.
I pressed my back against the cold cement of the basement wall. I couldn’t move far enough away from her—from it. The demonic creature that used to be my mother threw its nasty head toward the sky and laughed.
It didn’t stop laughing. Not as I clawed at my ears. Not as I covered my eyes and tried to disappear.
This was my hell. This was my torture.
This was my punishment for being born.
* * *
I wokeup with a racing heart. My white bed sheets had been soaked in sweat, and the memory of my nightmare came to me in flashes of panic and horror.
Just a dream, I reminded myself. I wasn’t going back there. I was safe, I was in my apartment. I wasn’t in a basement. There was no metal mask over my face.
I ran my trembling hands over my mouth to make sure.
You’re okay, Lyra.
My phone buzzed on my nightstand. When I picked it up, I had a message from Theia.
“Sleep well, daughter. Remember your purpose. – T”
